lunhs cancer

What a ride this has been! This is the first time I have run a crowd funding campaign, and it has been a fascinating experience. My emotions have ranged from thinking this is exciting, to uncertain, to heartwarming, to what-in-the-world-were-we-thinking, to hopeful, to exhilarating. There was the initial jump in responses, there was the dreaded "Day of No Pledges," there was all the great press we got, there was the exciting pledge match, there was the thrill of scrolling through my Facebook feed and seeing people playing the Pointless Challenge, and there was the amazing push at the end which got us not only to the goal but over the top! I don't think I will ever forget that Friday night when we hit our goal which ensured we would get the money we raised. It was a gorgeous evening, and so our family decided that we would bust out the grill for the first time this season and enjoy an outdoor dinner. The pledges had been pouring in all day, and my friend Meriah kept textin...

(I was a kid in the 80s and thought that was one of the coolest movies I had ever seen.) As my regular readers know, Jason and I have been working toward opening our dream business , Pointless Brewery & Theatre . We are in the middle of a super exciting and nerve-wracking fundraising campaign through Kickstarter . For those of you who aren't familiar with Kickstarter, it is a website that gives artists a platform to get the word out to a large audience about their project, and people can make donations (pledges) to help make this project come to life. The awesome/terrifying thing about Kickstarter is that if you DON'T make your goal, you lose all the pledges. Let me say that again... You lose ALL THE MONEY. So far we have raised over $37,000 and have more than 300 people from around the world supporting our project. All that love feels pretty amazing. Here's the harsh part: we need to hit our $50,000 goal by April 20 or we will lose over $37,000 .  Yikes. Please don...

There is a constant clock ticking in my mind. Tick...tick...tick.... "Living on borrowed time...." I've passed my expiration date. Tick...tick...tick.... The thing that scares me most, that threatens to tear me away from my family lives inside my body. Tick...tick...tick.... One day my luck's gonna run out. Tick...tick...tick.... Ya know what sucks? Having your future torn away from you when you were just digging into your career. When things were looking so bright. Awards rolling in, people taking notice. When you have a house full of small children counting on you. (They're still counting on me.) So what do you do? You dust yourself off, take stock of what you still CAN do, where you still CAN play an important role, what dreams you STILL dare to dream. My cancer is well controlled right now. Right now I have time. Tick...tick...tick... Right now I have time to plan for my family's future. To get things in place to take care of them when I'm gone. (D...

An interview with Mark Maynard, in which I discuss beer, cancer, Yes And, life choices, improv, and facing challenges head on. Pointless Brewery & Theatre to explore the intersection of brewing and improv

We got some nice press coverage for our dream project, Pointless Brewery & Theatre . Don't let stage IV lung cancer keep you down! Couple opening Pointless Brewery & Theatre in Ann Arbor Want to join our Pointless endeavor? Pledge to our Kickstarter and enjoy lots of Pointless perks!

Here it is, folks! As I wrote in " A Pointless Story ", Jason and I have been hard at work getting things in place to open our dream business, Pointless Brewery & Theatre. (Which, as far as I know, is the ONLY such combo in existence. If you know of others, please let me know, I would love to meet the owners!) And now is your chance to come on board and help get this up on its feet. Watch the video, check out the cool perks, and join us! AND - all donations of $75 or more get a one-year Pointless Peeps membership, which gives you 10% off of all show tickets, drinks, snacks, and merchandise. Plus a cool t-shirt. Pretty sweet, huh? Click on the logo below to watch:

I have been so busy writing stuff for CURE that I haven't been posting new content for this lovely bloggety-blog. And there is a huge piece of the puzzle that I have been leaving out. I briefly mentioned this in a previous post , but Jason and I are knee-deep in launching our dream business. I guess I keep forgetting to write about it because we are so busy working on it that I don't have a lot of brain space left to reflect! So, on with the story.... Ever since Jason and I have known each other (seriously, we talked about this on one of our first dates), we have planned to one day open a theatre together. We knew we wanted to create a space where people could come together and have fun, laugh, be creative, and just enjoy. However, since we have both worked in theatre for so long, we are well aware of how difficult it is to have a financially viable theatre. We looked at models of theatres that were successful, and they all had other sources of funding in addition to ticket sa...

I was jolted awake by Michael Stipe serenading me with "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" and immediately remembered my sister telling me she had been listening to that song some 20+ years ago when our mom called to tell her I had been diagnosed with childhood bone cancer. Really poor song choice for my alarm this morning, a day when I was waiting for scan results. Two years ago today I had just returned from the AATE conference, where I had met all sorts of impressive folks, the leaders in the field of Theatre for Young Audiences, and had received an award as one of the up-and-comers. And today I spent the day at the cancer center. The results of my scans were mixed. The lungs look stable with a bit of shrinkage on the remaining spots (yay!) and the brain scan was clear (big yay!). The questionable area was my kidneys. There might be something suspicious on them, but they consulted with several radiologist and they couldn't agree if they were rea...

This weekend I saw an excellent production of To Kill a Mockingbird (seriously, if you live in the greater Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area, run, don't walk to get tickets ).   It was full of beautiful, powerful moments, but Atticus' lines about courage really jumped out to me and have been bouncing around in my mind ever since he spoke them. He explains that courage is "knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do." I've often been told how brave I am in this cancer journey (and in my first). That has never made much sense to me, as I'm not doing any of this by choice. I would much rather NOT have cancer, and NOT put my family through all of this. Sure, great life lessons, live in the moment, blah blah blah, but I would really prefer not to have cancer at all. Really. REALLY. Really really for real.   I am, however, surrounded by some very courageous people. ...

Today I had the joy of walking our eldest to his first day of kindergarten. As he was getting ready, he told me that he may feel a bit nervous when he gets to school, and asked me if I feel nervous in new places. I love how articulate he is about his feelings. When we got to school he did amazingly well, taking a moment to look around the classroom the telling me he would like to play in the kitchen area.  It is funny to reflect on how I felt last year when he had his first day of preschool. I had all the typical anxiety about my little guy growing up so fast. This year, I just felt so thankful that I got to participate in this milestone.  I've been feeling very Emily Webb lately, as we say goodbye to summer and transition into a new season and school year. " Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.  Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?" (For the non-theatre geeks among you, Emily Webb is the lead in the p...